PC and Console Gaming Blog by Napalm Gaming

Xbox Kinect - the advent is almost upon us!

2010-10-29T06:55:00.008-05:00

Kinect Adventures is included... I'm sure I could work off a few pounds doing some of this stuff!

Video Games | Kinect Adventures | E3 2010: Debut Trailer

Wii Sports Resort

2010-04-14T07:32:00.003-05:00

After picking up Wii Sports Resort a few months ago, it has easily become the most played game on our Nintendo Wii. It comes with some remakes of popular games from the original Wii Sports release such as golf and bowling. What makes the new sports package so much better than the original is that it can use the Wii MotionPlus.

Wii MotionPlus is an add-on to the Wii remote that adds another gyroscope which helps determine more accurately the movement of the remote. Not only can it tell when you are moving up and down, left and right, it can now tell more accurately if you are twisting the controller and makes movement of your remote on the screen nearly 1:1.

Our favorite games by far have been Swordplay, Frisbee Golf, Golf, Table Tennis, Bowling and Archery.

One of the complaints we have with the technology is that especially during extremely active games like Swordplay and Table Tennis the remote gets disoriented frequently and needs to be recalibrated with the sensor by placing it upside down on the floor. Perhaps this will be fixed over time.

Lenovo Back To School Instant Win

2009-08-30T21:53:00.001-05:00

Empire Craft

2009-08-17T20:20:00.003-05:00

Empire Craft is a newly released game that has generated a HUGE notoriety among the internet community for it's very unethical advertising - breasts. That's right, most of the ads around the internet including facebook have scantily clad women laying around in lingerie. Does this have anything to do with the game and is the game adult oriented? Nope. It's just a sleezy gimmick. If that doesn't prepare you for my review then nothing will.

The game came out of beta and is *free* in the fact that you can play in a limited amount without the purchase of the in game currency called Diamonds. In fact, numerous quests require diamonds. Even though it says you can actually earn them by doing various quests and events, you can't. It's a lie. In fact, the prices for these diamonds in US currency are so outrageous that noone even considers buying them unless they earn over $3000 a month. They did recently lower the price for Diamonds due to many many complaints, but it is still outrageous. $1 for 10 diamonds. Some of the quests require purchase of items which are 70 or 80 diamonds a piece. You are constantly encouraged to "spend diamonds" in order to accomplish simple tasks faster.

Now that you've read the important stuff, I'll delve into the game basics.
You get to choose between dwarf, orc or human for your alliance against the forces of the Devils. You start with a city with a level 0 city hall, a lumberyard, quarry, iron mine and farm (food).

Upgrading is basically a matter of having the correct amount of wood, stone, iron and food in order to build the structure to the next level. In many respects, the game mimics the game Travian. But what really drives this game is Heroes which are hired at a Tavern for about 50-70 gold. Heroes are important because you can't control your troops or attack or do quests without them. But getting the gold is another matter entirely. You can't sell everything, you are limited to what your hero has on or very rarely some of the items you get from a rare chest (typically wooden). Quests you complete with your hero on a daily basis will earn you a leather key which are almost never used.

There are quests for your union (in game alliance of players), military status (your efforts in attacking the devils), hero status, or for developing your character (beginner line of quests for learning the ropes.) By the way the final quest in the beginner line encourages you to "Charge" your account by purchasing diamonds. Sleazebags.

Upon reaching a certain population size (or more specifically commerce points) you can build a "sub city". A sub city can be occupied but you cannot lose your capitol city. For your cities besides the mines and lumberyards and farms, etc inside the city you can also occupy ones outside your city, up to 5. A lot of times these will be occupied by other players and you will have to send your heroes to claim the resources and defend them as necessary.

For some of the more advanced parts of the game, crystal mines are required and allow upgrading the Union shops as well as other things in the game allowing you to acquire better items. No, these do not give you Diamonds. They are protected by huge numbers of Devil troops and require join effort of Union players or a player with an enormous....army and huge...cities and well trained in the arts of....heroism.

Besides that, the ultimate goal is to be the biggest jerk with the largest set of balls in the game so no one will mess with you. I'm not sure the game ever ends. At least with Travian, there is a end of game sequence with the Natars where you have to complete a World Wonder. Then it restarts.

In summary, I give my this game two fingers up. Or rather the game creator does. Yes, that was fingers not thumbs. They are not here to entertain you. They are here only to make money off of you. Did I mention that he was sued by Microsoft for click fraud? Yeah, that's the kind of person you're dealing with. I hope you don't supply him with your paypal information. He is Chinese businessman Eric Lam who is also the person behind Evony. And now you know the rest of the story.

Eternal Lands Beta

2009-07-08T12:36:00.003-05:00

Eternal Lands is a free MMORPG that is now in Beta based in what seems to be the middle ages with magic and fighting. The graphics, while not premium content, will apparently not run well on computers over 5 years old, which is a shame due to the small footprint the game takes up on the harddrive. My computer constantly registered 59/60 FPS during my trial.

The character creation process is still a bit clunky. At the sign-in screen you have a button to create a new character, but it doesn't automatically pop up the character generation screen. You have to click the button on the bar at the bottom to rename and set up your character.

After creating my guy, I proceeded to follow the tutorial. It's a pretty decent tutorial and if you need any help along the way there are plenty of people to talk you through it. Just join the newbie channel in the upper left corner and type "@" and your question.

Along your travels you can harvest vegetables, sticks, and eventually ore and other items. The graphics are about the quality you can expect from Runescape but that's an acceptable sacrifice for the payoff in game size. While World of Warcraft folders can take up to 10-12Gb of space for the high quality graphics, the download for this game is about 20Mb, plus the separate download for sound.

Movement in the game is a bit tedious. I couldn't find a run option and targeting the rabbits and beavers is laborious in the extreme. Not only do they move as fast as you do but they move almost constantly and unless you are with in range to attack it, you still have to worry about terrain obstructing your view (and thus your attack).

Healing can take a while as well unless you can afford a good healing potion, but for the first 15 attack levels (while you are learning to fight) you can use the tutorial dude to heal your character instead of eating to increase your regen and sitting down and waiting for 10 minutes.

Items while easy to obtain are nearly impossible to sell at the early areas unless you happen to have rabbit furs which you need for the fighting quest, or vegetables from the garden.

All-in-all, I found it a generally fun free game to start playing and would recommend giving it a try if you're looking for a free alternative to World of Warcraft.

Google Chrome OS?

2009-07-08T08:09:00.003-05:00

In an article on the NY Times, Google announced last night it's plans to replace Windows in the smaller netbook laptops. For an OS that is bound within a web browser, I guess it depends on how it is able to interface with the hardware on how it will affect gaming on those computers. Microsoft has already lost a lot of OS share to Linux, especially on the server side and gaming has been gradually taking off on the Linux side as well with increasing gaming support utilizing WINE, now on version 1.1.25, which includes many virual memory and game fixes, including a sound fix for WoW.

Starcraft II Poll

2009-06-30T14:56:00.001-05:00

Please cast your vote and we'll let Blizzard know what their customers think!

forex Poll

Blizzard on LAN gaming

2009-06-30T08:50:00.004-05:00

Just in case you were excited about the new Starcraft II game and playing with your friends and family, Blizzard's official stance is they have no plans to include LAN play at this time. Click here to read the article over on Kotaku. For most of us out there tired of joining online multiplayer servers is the players who have pirated or hacked the game kick our butts, making the game absolutely terrible to play. Most of the time the multiplayer games I play, I play with my close friends and family. That's it. So while I have enjoyed the Starcraft series, I will say I will most likely NOT be purchasing Starcraft II. I'm sorry Blizzard, but you can never stop piracy, and this move hurts the people who honestly purchase your software. Pirates and hackers will always find another way and those of us who pay to play the right way are now penalized. Thanks a lot.

Blizzard Beta Testing

2009-06-30T08:25:00.003-05:00

If you are interested in trying out the latest games for Blizzard, you have to sign up for a Battle.net account.

If you have a World of Warcraft account, you can merge that with Battle.net in order to sign up for beta-tester status - you have to have at least one game associated with your Battle.net account. After you have created your profile, under the section Manage My Games, click on Merge a World of Warcraft® Account. Follow the instructions and make a note that you are changing your login for World of Warcraft to your email address.

On your Battle.net home page click on Beta Profile Settings. Accept the user agreement and download the appropriate system profiler software which sends your system specs to Blizzard to help them determine if they want you to help beta test a specific game. Make sure that you have check marks to all the universes you want to be in the beta pool for. These include Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo.

Current firmware

2009-06-23T18:07:00.002-05:00

Nintendo Wii
Current firmware is 4.0 released in March 2009, the primary feature is allowing the use of the SD Card to store save game data (or move from the system to the card, recovering valuable space) and launch downloaded games from the SD Card. As long as your Wii is connected to your wireless router, you should have a message from Nintendo if you haven't upgraded your firmware. Just follow the instructions.

Playstation 3
Current firmware is 2.76 with 2.80 supposed to be released tomorrow. According to Eric Lempel, PlayStation Network Operations, the "playback quality of some PS3 format software has been improved." Whatever that means. Come on guys, give us some detail.

Xbox 360
Current firmware was released in December, 2007. They are currently working on their new redesign of the Xbox 360 console so I doubt there will be any upcoming releases prior to the release of Project Natal.

Tomorrow's game releases

2009-06-22T07:21:00.003-05:00

The Conduit (Wii)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, DS - Autobots, DS - Decepticons)

Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires (Xbox 360, PS3)
This game is rather unique and seems a combination of risk and card-play for powerups.

Overlord 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC, DS - Minions, Wii - Dark Legend)

Protect your gear!

2009-06-19T14:51:00.004-05:00

Surge suppression, power conditioning and battery backup are often the most neglected but most critical parts of any technology investment. In this article I'll discuss the necessity of having them.

For my computer, I use a Belkin F6C1500 1500VA 830 Watts 8 Outlets UPS. It runs my high powered computer, wireless router, 22" monitor, etc for at least 5 minutes in case of a power outage.

Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
A UPS is important because most PCs have problems if they are not turned off gracefully. This is especially so because information is constantly being processed in volatile memory (RAM) before being stored to the hard drive. There are chances your critical system files could become corrupted, your game files, etc if it happens in the middle of a write operation. What if it happens while the computer is updating the file allocation table (FAT)? I have had computers require a repair of the OS in order to run again but you never know what open files have lost. I hope you saved that MS Office or OpenOffice document before the crash because it might not be recoverable.

The UPS isn't designed to run your system for 2 hours. You would need a generator for that. What the UPS will do is give you ample time to shut down your programs and turn off the computer system before your battery runs out...assuming of course you are at your computer, or with software that can be installed, you can tell your computer to initiate a shutdown when you have a set amount of battery time left even if you are away.

What to look for in a UPS and how much do I really need?
That will be determined by the power rating of each component inside your computer, your monitor, router and anything else you are plugging into the UPS. There are devices you can use to measure this exactly and it will change depending on how heavily you are using your power supply and video card and processor especially in heavy graphics oriented games. The Power Rating on the individual components is very conservative and can be a good place to start.

If you can get a UPS that conditions the power coming in as well, you are good. Most UPS's will handle power surges and brownouts, etc.

I recommend this beast which will run even a high-end system for about 3-5 minutes. It is currently on sale for $30 off with free shipping. Shipping on these things can be very expensive because of the weight of the batteries so that is very nice.

CyberPower Intelligent LCD Series GreenPower UPS CP1500AVRLCD UPS

3D Gaming Rig

2009-06-15T16:06:00.008-05:00

As a follow up to the 3D Vision article on NVIDIA's new 3D stereoscopic technology, I have compiled components for a mid-range system. I have not built it, but this is merely my idea of what an ideal game system would be at this level. Of course, this is just a list of parts and would need to be assembled. If you don't have experience doing that, you shouldn't be building your own system as some of these parts can damage very easy if you don't know what you are doing. I have been building my own computers like this for over 7 years and know about the "gotchas" associated with doing that. Perhaps there will be a follow-up article on that if you guys and hot gamer chicks are interested in building your own custom gaming rig. :)

Here is a mid-level system, which will run great for most games, under $2000. I have included gaming keyboard and mouse, which are of course optional if you want to keep cost down.

Item	Description	Quantity	Unit Price	Total
Motherboard	ASUS M3A78 AM2+ with Gigabit LAN, 8gb max ram	1	$79.99	$79.99
Power Supply	OCZ GameXStream 1010-Watt Power Supply	1	$189.99	$189.99
Memory	8Gb OCZ Reaper (2 dual-channel 2x2gb kits) on ASUS QVC list	2	$57.99	$115.98
CPU/Processor+Fan	AMD Phenom X4 9950 Quad Core with 4000 MT/S Socket AM2+ on ASUS QVC list	1	$149.99	$149.99
Video/Graphics Card	BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC MAXCORE w/dual DVI and full HDMI support with supplied adapter	1	$159.99	$159.99
Mouse	Logitech G9 Gaming Mouse	1	$66.99	$66.99
Keyboard	Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard	1	$76.99	$76.99
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit OEM	1	$189.99	$189.99
DVD/CD/BR player	Lite-On Blue-Ray/DVD/CD Reader/Writer with Lightscribe	1	$89.99	$89.99
Hard Drive	1TB Seagate Barracuda drive	1	$89.99	$89.99
Monitor	NVIDIA 3D-Vision Bundle – Samsung Syncmaster 120Hz 22” LCD + 3D Vision Glasses	1	$599.99	$599.99
Case/Tower	Apevia X-Telstar ATX Mid-Tower	1	$89.96	$89.96
Cables	XION SATA II 1.5' (18”) cable (90deg to 180deg locking cable for hard drives)	2	$4.99	$9.98
				$1,909.82

I have not included speakers, but if you do not have surround sound, I highly recommend you invest in it, especially for a realistic 3D gaming experience. Onkyo offers a great product with 7.1 surround sound for under $500, the HTS5200.

A Memory of Light

2009-06-11T08:35:00.005-05:00

For those of you who follow the Wheel of Time series written by James Oliver Rigney aka Robert Jordan, you know that he passed away on September 16, 2007 after finally losing his battle fighting the disease Amyloidosis. At the time of his passing, he was working very closely with his wife Harriet who was also his editor. He knew his time was short and made sure to leave ample notes and instructions with her. He wanted to finish the story he began so many years ago.

After his death, there was a huge outpouring of sympathy for the family. But Harriet is a very strong woman and responded to Jim's fans on the Dragonmount site simply saying "Onward." After a short time of grieving and the funeral, she set forth to complete the task of finding an author to take the summaries, outline and writing that Jim had already completed to finish A Memory of Light, the last book in his Wheel of Time series. This was the single most important thing that she wanted to do to honor Jim. She chose Brandon Sanderson.

I have never read anything so compelling and engrossing as Jim's stories. When you read his stories, he draws the world around you. You feel the wind. You see the trees, the land and the cities. It's as if you truly are there and watching the story unfold. Thank you Harriet for your strength and perseverance and Brandon Sanderson for your hard work in the insurmountable task of filling Jim's shoes. I know the books will be wonderful and look forward to reading them as they come out. It is truly Jim's final memorial, the best way we all can remember and honor him, by finishing his story.

Brandon has been working on the book, while still keeping his commitments for his books with his publisher. Jim had originally wanted the last piece to be one complete book, regardless of how long it would have to be to finish the story. But it seems that it is indeed so big, that they are breaking it apart into 3 separate shorter stories. The first to be released on November 3rd, 2009, a little less than 5 months away. It can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and is called The Gathering Storm. By pre-ordering, you can save a little more than $10 off of the MSRP of $29.99.

There is no timeline in stone and the titles of the final 2 books are not yet set in stone either. Dragonmount has the latest on all of this news.

Wii MotionPlus on June 8th - followup

2009-06-09T23:01:00.007-05:00

Ok, so yesterday was the big release date. How are things looking out there for the Wii MotionPlus?

Walmart is selling it as a bundle only with Tiger Woods 10 for $59.82.
Target is selling it with Tiger Woods 10 for $59.99.
Toys "R" Us is selling it on it's own at the MSRP of $19.99.
Best Buy is selling it individually at MSRP of $19.99 and also as a bundle with Tiger Woods 10 for $59.99.
Gamestop/EB Games is selling it for $24.99 individually.
Amazon.com is selling it for MSRP ($19.99)
Amazon.com is selling the Tiger Woods bundle with $3 savings for $56.99, with Grand Slam Tennis on sale with $3 savings for $46.99.

Wii Sports Resort isn't released until July 26th so you'll have to keep waiting on that.

So for my summary, stay away from buying it at Gamestop. They are infamous for stunts like this. The cheapest place I found from the main e-tailers and retailers is Amazon.com and some of the bundles are eligible for their free "Super Saver Shipping."

EA Grand Slam Tennis

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2009-06-09T22:07:00.004-05:00

The newest Harry Potter game is almost here! Release date is set for June 30th and can be pre-ordered for the Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS and PC, and is supposed to be available for the Mac as well. It's rated for 10+ except for the handhelds where it's rated for everyone. Here is the trailer from EA Games:

Pros

It looks like they are trying to make it available for everyone as the video requirements are low...i just hope that they include higher quality video graphics for those of us with pimped out systems!
Duel your friends on the handhelds!
I've always enjoyed flying in Quidditch. I can't wait to test it out.

Cons

The video if the graphics are too wimpy for my beefy card
The requirements checker on EA Games lists Windows Vista but passed my XP MCE PC.

NVIDIA 3D Vision

2009-06-07T10:20:00.009-05:00

This is a new technology that Nvidia announced in January 2009. This technology works with over 300 games out of the box and will immerse you into a 3D world.

Straight from their press release at CES 2009,

"Forming the foundation for a new consumer 3D stereo ecosystem for gaming and home entertainment PCs, 3D Vision is a combination of high-tech wireless glasses, a high-power IR emitter and advanced software that automatically transforms hundreds of PC games into full stereoscopic 3D experiences."

How it works:
A high-powered USB attached infrared transmitter sends out the 3D data directly to the wireless shutter glasses, up to a maximum of 20ft and up to 40hours of charges. The glasses offer free range of motion and allows for 2x resolution per eye as well as an ultrawide viewing angle, but you have to view the game on a 120Hz monitor, projector or HDTV.

Costs:
This depends on how much technology you need to buy. Chances are high that if you aren't a hardcore gamer and even if you have recently purchased a PC, your system is not up to the minimum requirements. You'll have to factor in the costs of upgrading your PC as well as the added cost of purchasing the glasses and display. The glasses themselves run about $200 and a 22" monitor will run you about $400.

Minimum system requirements

Microsoft Windows Vista 32/64-bit or Windows 7 32/64-bit
Intel® Core™2 Duo or AMD Athlon™ X2 CPU or higher
1GB of system memory. (2GB is recommended)
100 MB free disk space

NVIDIA 3D Vision-Ready displays devices

Desktop Displays

Samsung® SyncMaster 2233RZ 120 Hz LCD display
ViewSonic VX2265wm FuHzion 3D/120Hz LCD Display (Black)
100 Hz and higher analog CRTs

HDTVs

Mitsubishi® 1080p DLP® Home Theater TV: WD-57833, WD-60735, WD-60737, WD-60C8, WD-60C9, WD-65735, WD-65736, WD-65737, WD-65C8, WD-65C9, WD-65833, WD-65835, WD-65837, WD-73735, WD-73736, WD-73737, WD-73833, WD-73835, WD-73837, WD-73C8, WD-73C9, WD-82737, WD-82837, L65-A90
Generic DLP HDTV mode

Projectors

DepthQ® HD 3D Projector by LightSpeed Design, Inc.
DQ-3120 by LightSpeed Design, Inc.

NVIDIA GeForce GPUs

GeForce GTX 200 Series

GeForce 9 Series

GeForce 8 Series

GeForce 8800 Ultra
GeForce 8800 GTX
GeForce 8800 GTS
GeForce 8800 GT

How to set up a television or projector as a 2nd monitor for your computer.

2009-06-06T22:27:00.014-05:00

First of all, it is important to determine what TV you are going to hook up and the connections that will be required before anything else can be done.

This how-to is based on the Nvidia video chipset. If you have an ATI or other video card or chip, this tutorial is not for you as it uses Nvidia control panel to complete the tasks.

I am using a Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS video card which can send video, using a supplied cable, as component video or using an adapter on the DVI interface, as HDMI.

First, ensure you have the latest settings for your video card by visiting Nvidia.

In your system tray in the bottom right of your screen, right click on the Nvidia icon. When you move your mouse over it there is a popup that says “NVIDIA Settings.” Left click the option for NVIDIA Control Panel.

On the left menu, left click Display top open the menu if it's not expanded already. Then left click “Run multiple display wizard.”

Left click “Next” then select how you are connecting to your 2nd screen. The computer should detect the video connection as long as you have your cables connected. In my case, I'm using component cables to connect to my projector. The computer detects the connection and marks it as component.

Left click “Next”and select the standard for your connection. Component will handle 1080i, but your TV or projector also has to support it. In my case, my projector can support up to 1080p so I select 1080i since that's the highest option available to me.

Now you select whether you want your main display to be cloned (use the exact same screen) that your TV will use or if you will have them configured separately.

If you use Clone, both screens must be the same resolution so if you are running 1680x1050 for example and your tv runs at 1768x992, both of them will run 1768x992 (1080i HDTV). If you select “Clone” and left click “Next”, everything is set up and you can click “Next” then “Finish.”

If you use Dualview however, you can keep your main screen at your higher resolution and create a custom resolution for your TV. If you select “Dualview” and left click “Next”, select the resolution that your primary screen should (or is currently) running at. Mine is running at 1680x1050 so I select that and left click “Next” twice and then click “Finish” to close the multiple display wizard.

Now, you should be set to use your 2nd screen. After the wizard runs, you will have your screens configured already in dualview mode with your primary screen on the left and your secondary screen (TV) on the right. What that means is in order to do stuff on your new TV screen, you move your mouse cursor off the right side of your main monitor and it will appear on your TV screen. You can move windows or applications from your main screen to the 2nd TV screen by clicking on the title bar and while holding down your left mouse button, drag the entire window or application over to the new screen. If you double click the title bar, it will maximize. This is especially handy if you use Netflix to watch online movies. Then you start your movie and click the full screen button on the Netflix movie viewer. What happens now is that the video will show on your new TV screen while the audio comes out of your computer speakers. That's because only HDMI transports audio along the same cable. You will need to run a separate audio cable to your TV in order to have the sound come out from it. Or if you use a sound system, you can run the audio to that. My motherboard has digital coax audio S/PDIF so I run that to my home theater system for 7.1 surround sound.

Now the other trick is that when you do NOT want to have the second screen active, you can disable it easily through the Nvidia system try icon. Left click the icon, select either video device, nView Display Settings, Single Display then select your primary monitor – the one not listed as HDTV probably.

Microsoft Natal

2009-06-03T18:58:00.008-05:00

Microsoft wow'd this years E3 with their demo of project Natal, a game and multimedia system without a controller. That's right, no remote. Built on technology used in recently acquired 3DV Systems' ZCam, the camera for the Xbox 360 will be able to scan you or an object you hold and relate to them real time or use them as shown in this video.

Next to come will be the purchase of code to extrapolate the object's DNA from the scan and using cloning technology to take over key people in the US government and the business sectors, Microsoft will be in a position to take over the world!!

My top 10 multiplayer games

2009-06-02T13:13:00.007-05:00

My family and friends love to play games together. Here is a list of games I have found and enjoy playing. It is not in order and not dedicated to a specific gaming platform.

1) World of Warcraft (PC)

Ok, a little background on this. For many years, we would only play games together that absolutely did not require any kind of payment. Period. I flat out refused. Then my friend brought his PC to my house with this game and was showing us how it worked and how much fun it was questing. Yeah, we were hooked. I set up my trial account which lasted a day before I realized I couldn't get mailed items

and ended up purchasing the game. That wasn't enough though. I didn't have the same version that he did so I had to upgrade to the Burning Crusade expansion. Now there is Wrath of the Lich King. This game, although pay-to-play at about $15/month, is so massive that when they take servers down for maintenance every tuesday, sometimes it takes them over 12 hours to finish. I can't even begin to imagine how many servers they have and how many people they have managing them. I hope for their sake they are running this all on vmware clusters, or the like.

So this fun *little* game is fun because I can play in groups with my friends, we help each other quest, fight in PVP together against the swarms of horde, or just waste the day away trying to accomplish all of the strange and mostly worthless achievements that came with the latest expansion.

The boring part is the grinding and farming. Grinding experience is where you go and kill a bunch of stuff and complete quests as fast as you can trying to get to that next level where you can get more fighting skills and train more profession skills. Farming is where you do the same thing but in order to raise your reputation with different factions (groups), gather green, blue and purple items (and orange sometimes), or to get certain materials or gold, or stuff to put on the auction house for the highest bidder.

Some people just socialize, dancing on the fountains in the cities, or doing a line dance while making train noises in the auction house (they must be REALLY bored).

2) Scorched Earth 3D (PC)

For those of us that have used the old IBM clones or early DOS based PCs, we know that this comes out of an archaic cult classic game where a gorilla tosses an exploding banana at another gorilla in a city. That was 2D.

Then there was Scorched Earth, the mother of all games. My roomate in college and I would play this after class, before class...when we weren't playing Warlords. In those days, not many people had a computer, or we would share one in our dorm. So, hotseat games became very popular. Many people would take a turn on one computer which would play out before the next person's turn. Then they added simultaneous mode where everyone would tell the computer what they wanted to do and it would do EVERYTHING at once. Wow, where'd my shot go? How'd you get your baby missle inside my heavy shield?

So what is the obvious progression from this wonderful game? Why, 3-dimensional warfare of course. New weapons, new environments and beautifully FREE! They made their project opensource and anyone can develop MODs for it (gaming environments, weapons, tanks) Any you can play with up to 24 people...holy crap. Some of the weapons you can buy take out half the map on their own when launched by 1 person. The graphics, sounds and gameplay are fantastic for a free game.

3) AdventureQuest (PC)

Ok, this game isn't truly multiplayer, although many sites look at it as such. It's a unique game that is kind of fun to play where you can buy unique weapons, armor (like ninja, mage, berserker) and spells, go on quests and the buy-in for lifetime gameplay as a Guardian is $25. My son and I enjoy this one.

4) Mario Kart (Wii)

This game is fun to play online, but it's a pain to connect with your friends. We gave up after a while since it took so long. However playing it in the house on the Wii and big screen is a real blast. Zoom around taking out the computer players or each other, battle to gather coins, or just race. You can set the teams, chose your ride and your famous Nintendo cartoon characters.

5) Halo (Xbox, Xbox 360)

This game has come far and is a cool series to play for people who enjoy a good frag like in the gold old days of computer games such as Duke Nukem and Rise of the Triad as well as the Quake and Doom games. You can fight against each other in multiplayer with grenades, highpowered guns and rocket launchers. Halo 2 ads the ability to use a one-handed weapon in the off-hand. Watch out for those needlers! You can also play in co-op mode where you help each other defeat the bad guys. Just don't run into your partners friendly fire...

6) Metal Arms (Xbox)

Glitch! You rusty bucket of bolts! This game is a blast to play. If you have kids, you can tell that the main general is swearing when he's giving Glitch his orders, but everything is always bleeped out. The weapons are so much fun, but where it really gets fun is using the robots that you can take control of or even get into and fight with! I enjoy grabbing myself a rivet gun and amassing an army of robots to follow me, which works well until someone makes them think I'm on the wrong side...

7) ExciteBots (Wii)

Online or split-screen, this game is so much fun to play. Playing as a animal/bug shaped robots, you drive on a course and score soccer goals, knock down bowling pins, smash your competition, chomp them in the butt and you soar so high into the sky you can't always see where you are going to end up.

8) MafiaWars (Text game on Facebook and many other social networking sites.)

A little bit of harmless fun where your mafia family battles against other mafia families. These families are merely friends you have invited to join you. With forums dedicated specifically for that purpose, it's fairly easy to get your mafia up to the 501 max allowed for you to fight with. However, the higher you go the more special items you can buy (1 for every 2 levels) and properties such as Mafia Mike's. You have jobs that you have to repeat in order to master a job tier before moving on to the next set of jobs. You have special loot that you collect and store in your vault for bonuses.

9) Texas Hold-em (Facebook, and many others)

I like playing this on Facebook because it's totally free, unless you choose to buy in with extra cash, but it's totally unnecessary. The graphics are wonderful and so is the gameplay. There are even drinks or gifts you can give to fellow players, which is nice to do when you have all of their money.

10) Perfect World (PC)

This is an anime based mmorpg similar to World of Warcraft but free with extra pay options. The first thing you notice when playing this game is that you can really jump far...and fall far without taking damage. The quests can be a little difficult to figure out at first but people are very helpful. The graphics and audio on this game are stunning and provide a very relaxing atmosphere.

ExciteBots: Trick Racing for the Wii

2009-06-02T08:40:00.009-05:00

ExciteBots is one of the most exciting games I've seen for the Nintendo Wii for a long time. It's the sequel to their release of ExciteTrucks and is a lot of fun for me, my wife and kids. My wife played it for a few hours and she doesn't usually play racing games. She likes games like Mario Party. She's an animal lover so I think the bugs as vehicles really appealed to her.

Pros
I love the bugs. It's cool in the middle of the game when my bot ends up walking on its legs after picking up a wrench and stomp on the competition, or soar through the air on wings with tons of air time and skip huge chunks of the course to catch up to the leader. My son loves the huge choice of bugs available and the different colors to choose from.

The zany games such as soccer, bowling, darts and the tambourine all add to the skill involved with staying on the course while trying to complete these challenges.

I really enjoyed the graphics. Such bright and vivid colors give me the feeling of being outdoors on a sunny day even if it's stormy outside. Connecting to my screen through component video probably helps a bit with the graphics. You can't get me to go back!

Cons
Yeah, you guessed it. The remote/sensor has a hard time of telling sometimes when I want to turn, especially when I get excited about my flip into the air and my power boost off of the pink bar into the tree just off of the path when I land while I try to frantically turn my bot and steer it away. Argh.

The red bar is a pain in my frogs nitro butt. Really. For some reason, the computer bots land on the bar and are already half way through getting off of it by the time my frog has gone up 2 marks. The idea is that you're supposed to move your wheel (or just your remote) in a circle in time with the bot as it goes around the bar.

Turning is also kind of hard in this game. Especially in the air, while I can see that my frog isn't very aerodynamic and has no wings to be able to ride the wind, with the game being designed for you to boost off of every hill, bump, rock or mountain, I believe there should be better turning. And while you're on the ground, you end up getting tons of drift for the most turns instead of just turning. Maybe I just get carried away about turning because of my frustration with the remote...

Thoughts
Well, what could make this game better? Certainly improved controls, but what is it missing? Really, not much is missing at all. There are very few weapons involved in destruction which is good for kids. Who needs to blow the competition away with a tactical nuke anyway? Ok, well the idea appeals to some of us gamers. Vehicles with flame throwers, drop some tacks on the road, throw up a smokescreen to blind them, razor sharp shredders to tear apart the tires and chassis of the cars you are rubbing with. Well, ya know...it could be fun, but it's out of style with this game. Maybe a sequel to this game might do just that :)

Firefox 3.5 Beta release 4

2009-06-02T08:12:00.004-05:00

The new Firefox is almost here! In fact, I'm testing it right now. It is pretty fast. For those of you who use Firefox as their primary browser like I do, you'll have noticed that it has been getting pretty slow over the past year. I've even tried Google's Chrome browser which is lightning fast...I just couldn't get used to it. They are boasting a 2x improvement over the speed of 3.0 and 10x over 2.0. The other changes are rather unimportant to most users. For a full list of changes, you can visit the beta site at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html. You can also download and test the beta from that site, just remember that it's still beta and is still being worked on.

Wii MotionPlus on June 8th

2009-06-01T12:41:00.009-05:00

Nintendo is getting ready to release their long awaited and MUCH needed InvenSense multi-axis gyro based wii remote attachment named Wii MotionPlus. It will be work with the upcoming title releases of the Wii Sports sequel, Wii Sports Resort, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, Grand Slam Tennis, Red Steel 2 - (MotionPlus with swords!) and Virtua Tennis 2009. All coming to the store on June 8th!

Why is the MotionPlus important for the Wii game sytem?
When Nintendo first released their Wii system at the bargain price of $249.99, that was their price point that they had to meet. In order to make it, they had to make a sacrifice on the number of gyroscopes - the little weighted electronic components that determine which way you are moving your remote and how fast (accelerometers). If you have noticed playing different games such as the very competitive challenge games on Mario Party, the games have a hard time of determining exactly what you are doing when you move the remote (flip the chimp!). The additional ingredients in the MotionPlus, which plugs into the bottom of your Wii Remote, is merely what they didn't include in their original design. It allows true 1:1 movement between your hand movements and the movement on the screen.

Ok, so why again is that important?
A lot of people have expressed frustration at the quality of titles released for the Wii gaming system that take advantage of what the Wii is meant to offer - True interactivity. We want to use the remote like a lightsaber in Star Wars or a sword while fighting as a ninja or samurai. It just doesn't work with the stock remote. The sensor can't tell most of the time when you raise your sword up above your head, how fast and what direction you swing it or how exactly it's being held. I can imagine right now the looks of consternation of the faces of the people at LucasArts when they released their game Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels. I bet they would have held off releasing the game until this summer if they had known Nintendo was going to release this! Perhaps there will be a sequel...

So now, with the release of this attachment, the hope of all Wii action gamers hangs in the balance. We are hoping that with this release, the big powerhouses will release the type of action games we have been waiting for. PLEASE!

Computer on the Big Screen!

2009-05-31T00:09:00.006-05:00

Ok, so I have my big screen with my projector hooked up, my sound system integrated into my room...why not hook up my PC? When I first bought my PC parts, I did so with the intent that eventually it would be a media and gaming PC. I built it with parts from newegg.com, tigerdirect.com and frys.com. With an ASUS crosshair motherboard, 4gb of ram, 1.5 TB of harddrive space, an Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS video card and an AMD Athlon 64-bit FX-62 dual-core processor, this thing rocks. Well it's getting old now, well over a year. But it still has no problems at all with the latest games.

One of the features of my video card is a converter that came with the video card for component video out which with a 25 ft component video cable plugs right into the back of my home theater system. Well, not quite... I also have a Wii and an Xbox both with component video connectors. So I bought an autosensing component video switch with 4 inputs on it. It hides well behind all of the components and I never need to mess with it.

So I plugged my computer video into there and in my nvidia control panel, I set up my new display through my component video as a dualview, so I had a different desktop on the bigscreen. For my audio, my computers motherboard has a wonderfully handy coax audio output that I ran to one of two in the back of the Onkyo HTS.

For my test, I launched my Netflix account in Internet Explorer. Since I had my dual-view on, I dragged my browser over to the big screen, maximized the browser window, selected my movie and ran it full screen. Everything was wonderful, just like watching a DVD from your own DVD player. Of course, don't try it if you don't have high-speed internet. A full movie download will take you many hours.

So now I came to a problem. After my movie was over, I decided to watch a DVD. Now there was no audio! Apparently what is happening is when my computer audio is hooked up to the home theater system, the audio from the DVD player, as well as the Wii and Xbox will not play. So my fix, at least for now unless I find a better solution, is to unplug the coax for the computer audio fromt he home theater system when I'm not using it. Not the best solution of course, but it's a start.

Another thing that I did is whenever I'm not specifically using my big screen, I use my Nvidia settings icon in my system tray to set my nView display settings to Single Display (for my primary monitor) so that my mouse would not go off of the right side of my screen, and it also will not send video out to the home theater system.

Now, if I want to...I can use my bluetooth mouse and keyboard and use the big screen as my primary monitor! Not very practical at the moment, but possible :)

Facebook

2009-05-30T22:59:00.005-05:00

There might be a lot of people that have heard of facebook, not know quite what it is and what it is about. Facebook.com is a social networking site where you can keep in touch with family and friends, upload pictures from your cell phone, or play hundreds of different games, all for free.

Some of the ones that I've played include Mafia Wars, Farm Town, Texas Hold-em and Bejeweled. Many of these games require you to invite your friends to play in order to gives you bonuses such as a bigger mob to fight with you, bigger armies to fight by your side, neighbors to help tend your fields, or in the case of Bejeweled, the amount of points your team (group of friends) earns gives you chances to earn prizes such as a laptop. In Texas Hold-em, your friends can give you daily gives of coins to help you on your way after you inevitably lose all of your coins after going all-in on a hand.

The list of games is huge, but the number of quality games is limited. I really enjoy the premade games that have been brought into facebook such as Bejeweled Blitz, Scramble - a hidden word challenge game. It's just a one-minute diversion, well depending on how many times you attempt to beat your friends score and then brag about it. I've found most people to be friendly and help you out when you need it.